Trip to Malaga, Day 2

Monday, January 23, 2012

We got up at 6:45...well, I got up at 6:15 to read the Bible--Yay! At 6:45 when they knocked on the doors to wake everyone up, I went to my room and started making my bed. I was halfway done when Marieta called me. "We're waiting for you," she said. "It's time to ask the blessing." Oh! oops. They eat breakfast first here. So I went to the table and we had breakfast. I just had some hot water because I was fasting.

After breakfast, our room had the chore of cleaning the salon grande (living/dining room), so we swept and dusted. then we had a few minutes to get dressed and ready before devotions. Devotions were from 7:45 to 8:30 and Juani (the house leader) shared her notes from the cumbre (conference in Madrid that had taken place that weekend).

At 8:30, we got in the vans to go to the church. My job was to work in the Rastro (furniture shop), so I waited at the church until it was time to leave and went with P, who is in charge of the rastro.

At the rastro, I cleaned the bathrooms, mopped a bit, folded clothes, and went through some bags of donations in the back room.

We went back to the church for lunch at 2:00, but I didn't eat anything, and the girls manifested curiosity at my fasting.

At 2:30 on Mondays, they have a prayer meeting, which I stayed for. They sang a bit, had a sharing time of testimonies from the cumbre, and prayed. I was struggling to fight off sleep, but finally succumbed and woke up about 3:15, added a prayer of my own, and it was over at 3:30.

We went downstairs and no one seemed to be around, so I went back upstairs, lay down on some chairs, and fell asleep. I woke up at 4:15 and my ride had already left to go back to the rastro. I had assumed they would call me when it was time to go. Oops again.

Juani took me to the Rastro and didn't say anything. I worked the rest of the afternoon and Juani came to pick me up about 7:30.

We went back to the house and were eating dinner. Towards the end of the meal, Juani came in with a very serious expression on her face, holding up my pocketknife.

"Whose is this?" she said.

"Mine," I said.

Juani gave me a look and walked out. A dead silence fell over the table.

Really big oops.

(It was found between the cushions of the couch, so it must have fallen out of my pocket in the morning when I did my devotions.)

After dinner I apologized to Juani and she gave me back my knife. But she talked to me very seriously about how I needed to be careful and if one of the new girls had found it, it would have been very bad...she could have kept it...who knows what could have happened. Ah!

I thought that after 2 months in Madrid, where I had mostly figured out how things worked, I was over the "oops" moments. Guess not.

Marieta asked me to wake her up in the morning when I got up to pray. She is full of hunger and thirst for God. I love it! It's so rare to find a person like that. From the first day I saw her, I noticed a glow about her, an energy and thirst for life. I wanted to make friends with her right from the start, so when they made me her roommate, I was very happy.

We had a new girl in the house when we got back from work, a 57-year-old woman named E. They set up a cot in my bedroom between the bunk beds for E to sleep on. That left scarcely any space to walk in the room.

I went to bed early without showering because I was so tired. I fell asleep right away.

Next post: Trip to Malaga, Day 3
First post: Trip to Malaga, Day 1